FIGS. 1 and 2 depict air-bearing surface (ABS) and top views, respectively, of a portion of a conventional PMR transducer 10. The conventional transducer 10 includes an intermediate layer 12. The intermediate layer 12 is the layer on which the pole is formed. The intermediate layer 12 may be a leading edge shield or a nonmagnetic layer. A gap layer 20 that may separate the pole 20 from the underlying intermediate layer 12 is shown. The conventional pole 30 and side shield 40 are also shown. For clarity, seed layer(s) are not separately depicted.
The side shields 40 are conformal to the pole 30. Thus, the thickness of the gap layer 20, t, does not vary in the down track direction. Similarly, the thickness of the gap layer 20 does not vary in a direction perpendicular to the ABS until the side shields 40 terminate at the throat height. Stated differently, the walls of the side shields 40 closest to the sidewalls of the pole 30 are substantially the same distance and have substantially the same profile as the pole 30.
Although the conventional transducer 10 may be used to write to media, there may be drawbacks at higher recording densities. At higher recording densities, the components 12, 20, 30 and 40 of the conventional transducer 10 are scaled to smaller sizes. As a result, the write field of the conventional pole 30 may be significantly reduced. In addition, the reverse overwrite loss may be increased. These developments are undesirable. Although these issues may be partially addressed by removal of the side shields 40, this is also undesirable. The side shields 40 are desired to prevent adjacent track interference and to mitigate wide track erasure that may be associated with a smaller side shield throat height.
Accordingly, what is needed is an improved transducer having a side shields.